Professional Documents
Culture Documents
a r t i c l e
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Article history:
Accepted 22 March 2010
Keywords:
Flexibility
Internet
ICTs
Workfamily balance
Workload
a b s t r a c t
The aim of this article is to analyse whether the Internet and other ICT technologies support a workfamily
balance amongst academics. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with academics in Iceland and
analysed according to the Grounded Theory Approach. This study challenges the notion that the Internet, as
part of ICT technology, makes it easier to establish a workfamily balance. Although the Internet makes some
features of the profession less complicated, like the possibility of working at home, it also initiates a
proliferation of the workload, triggers a prolonging of the workday and enhances a demand for extensive
availability. Whilst the use of the Internet increases the exibility of academics, the Internet and work
exibility are found to increase workfamily conict. The ndings suggest that the combination of exibility
and Internet use makes it increasingly difcult for academics to disengage themselves from work.
2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Icelanders are keen on using technology, with 92% of households
in Iceland having an Internet connection and 98% owning one or more
mobile phones (Statistics Iceland, 2009). Like other Nordic countries,
Iceland has a strong labour culture. In 2008, Iceland's labour force
participation rate was 87.1% for men and 77.7% for women (Statistics
Iceland, n.d.). In addition, statistics from 2009 show that Icelandic
males and females worked an average 46.2 h and 35.8 h a week,
respectively (Statistics Iceland, 2009). Such statistics are high when
compared to European standards (European Foundation for the
Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2007).
The fertility rate in Iceland, which was 2.1 in 2007, is the highest in
Europe (Eurostat Demographic Statistics, n.d.). In addition, Iceland also
occupies the top rank when it comes to gender equality according to The
Global Gender Gap Index (Hausmann et al., 2009). For these reasons,
Iceland provides the ideal circumstances in which to investigate the
position of the Internet and other ICT's amongst career oriented people,
such as academics, and explore how they combine their work and family
life.
In the Icelandic academic system, the Internet has been fully
integrated as a communication, teaching and resource tool. The
communication within these universities largely takes place through
email, by phone, and by online teaching communication programs
such as Blackboard and Moodle. Lectures are generally complimented
by a PowerPoint- or Adobe Reader show, with a result that overhead
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emails in my inbox at the end of this year, and that is after I have
deleted everything that has nothing to do with me [junk mail].
And Sigurur continues:
...but then I also monitored the number of emails that I sent out
and that has not increased as much, I sent out fewer than 2000
emails per year.
The amount of emails Sigurur receives and sends seems to be the
norm rather than the exception. Other academics spoke of receiving
about 70 emails a day, approximately 80 emails after the weekend,
and of hundreds of emails after three to four days. Hildur, an elderly
female academic simply states that emails are killing.
When participants come home from work, anywhere between
15.30 and 21.00 h, they check their email again. For Maria ve o'clock
has always been rush hour because of family demands which she tries
to combine with email trafc:
I have always been [snaps her ngers] 4.30! I have to go home! Pick
up [the kids]! I have to cook and all that stuff, but I usually start by
putting my computer up at home, check if I have gotten any emails
since I left and I go between [domestic] chores and work. I sit down at
the computer check [my email], maybe try to nish something, send
out one or two emails, and then I maybe get disturbed again. And I
am doing it whilst I am cooking or something like that.
While the female participants with young children are more prone
to combining family and work chores like Maria does, the male
participants with young children are less likely to do so. They prefer to
wait until the children have been put to bed before they pull out their
laptops again. Ragnar, for example, explains why he usually does not
try to combine caring tasks and work at the same time:
Well, you nd out quickly that you really can't do both at the same
time. You can't be working on the computer and having the kids
running around at the same time because they will mess with you
[laughs]. They will climb on your shoulders and then they come
and touch the key board and they will do all sorts of things
because they see the computer as a rival, you know.
All of the participants go back to work in the evening. Men are
more likely than women to return to the University to continue to
work, but most of the interviewees return to their laptops at home,
and usually work until 22.00 or 23.00 h. Participants work in the
evening on things that they could not nish during the day, on their
research that will help them to progress with their careers, on
international projects, on emails from students and on contacts with
co-workers in different time-zones. But ending the day by checking
one's email can be time consuming, as lf discovered:
In the evening I very often get email, maybe at 10 o'clock, from a
student, and when I reply to it instantly, I get another question.
Then I am like ooh this is not a good idea to be here ready at 10
o'clock in the evening and answering someone's email.
While student emails in the evening and weekends can cause
irritation, participants are more tolerant when it comes to research
related emails and phone calls. Eirkur's private life, for example, is
regularly intruded upon by colleagues that call him up on Saturday
night to discuss work. However, instead of showing irritation, Eirkur
defends his colleagues. He justies their calls by explaining that they
ask rst whether this is a convenient time or not:
I mean, it's not as depressing as it sounds [laughs]. It sounds like
you always work but it's really, you work with people, and it's
really something that you have a joint interest in. So somebody
calls you and people almost always say so what's your
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would sit [and work]. So for the rst two weeks of our four week
holiday...I mean I wasn't doing it continuously but two, three hours a
day, yeah.
5. Discussion
All in all, only few of the interviewed academics feel that the
Internet has denitely made their workfamily balance easier, and
women are in the forefront of this group. However, the vast majority
identies both pluses and minuses when it comes to the relation
between the Internet and their worklife. Participants appreciate the
fact that the Internet makes it possible for them to produce more
output per unit of time, that it is easier to obtain information and
easier to establish international contacts. The downsides are that the
Internet enhances the demand that people be available at all times,
raises expectations amongst people and consequently increases the
work pressure and workload of academics. Another drawback is the
fact that email trafc has become so extensive that it consumes a lot of
time.
4.4. The usage of ICTs for and during academics' private time
Internet and other ICTs are not only useful for work, but for daily
private routine as well. Mobile phones give academics a sense of
security, in that they are only one phone call away from their children.
Furthermore, as almost everyone in Iceland is connected to the
Internet, this is an effective way for busy Icelandic academics to keep
in touch with family and friends. With the help of Skype, MSN, email
and mobile phones they stay in contact. ICTs also make it possible to
stay in close contact with the home front while being abroad for work.
Ptur, a young academic, feels the scale may have tipped:
When I was younger and we were travelling abroad, I mean...Yeah, I
remember I would call in maybe once a week if I got to a payphone
that was not too expensive or got a pay card or something, and that
was ne. Now, if you are not sending text messages at least 34 times
a day when you are abroad, you must be hit by a train or something
[laughs]. It's just ridiculous [laughs].
Hence, it seems that the family has become more demanding as
well because of widespread ICT use and its straightforward accessibility. What has remained though is the perception that a family
holiday represents the ultimate family time. However, for academics
and their families this becomes more and more of a utopia as ICTs
make it somewhat difcult for academic teachers to disengage from
their work when they are on family holiday. Jla and her partner used
to work during the family holiday when their children were small. She
remembers one particular incident: The oldest son once said: Mom
when are we going to be on summer holiday like others? [laughs].
Many of the participants nd it very difcult to leave their work
behind and cannot resist the temptation of either bringing their
laptop and cell phone, or visiting an Internet caf during the family
holiday. Most would prefer to go on holiday somewhere where there
is no Internet or mobile phone connection at all, in order not to be
tempted to check on work-related items, but nding such a location
becomes increasingly difcult. Even in a country as isolated and
sparsely populated as Iceland it is hard to nd an area that is out of
reach of a communication network. Mara is a good example of an
academic who abused this reality in her last family holiday:
T.M. Heijstra, G.L. Rafnsdottir / Internet and Higher Education 13 (2010) 158163
6. Conclusion
It has been shown in this article that ICTs play an important role in
the discussions on both exibility and workfamily conict. It is for
this reason that the integration of ICTs into everyday life creates a
need for advanced theories on the subject of exibility and work
family conict. While Icelandic academics clearly do not want to go
back to a time period of working from 9 to 5, it is certain that ICTs
create new problems.
One of the major dilemmas is that it becomes increasingly difcult to
disengage oneself from work. This tendency, as has been demonstrated,
can enhance both workfamily conict and increase the risk of burnout.
All in all, while it is a positive development that ICTs are responsible for
academics no longer having to sit and work behind their desks all day,
they are at the same time a cause of workfamily conict and possible
burnout, as it becomes more challenging for academics to escape the
obligations attached to their profession.
Acknowledgements
We thank the University of Iceland Research Fund for supporting the
study. We thank the two blind reviewers for their useful comments.
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FURTHER READING
Esterberg, K. (2002). Qualitative methods in social research. USA: The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.